


One-Eighty

by carrythesky



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, In which Karen is a badass and Frank is a grumbling murder-holic, Sexual Tension, Slap Slap Kiss, Slow Burn, as per usual
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 07:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7499940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carrythesky/pseuds/carrythesky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>n.</i> <b>1.</b> A turn to face in the opposite direction. <b>2.</b> A complete reversal in thinking or behavior.</p><p>(Or: Karen’s life once again converges with the Punisher’s. Shit escalates*.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	One-Eighty

**Author's Note:**

> For my Kastle fam. Stay amazing. :)

She remembers the chain link fence.

 

Standing at the edge of the embankment, eyes tracking the road as it curves towards the horizon, she can picture the one that stood here. They ripped it up months ago, but the image is still sharp and clear behind her eyes - metal coils crushed, crumpled, tire tracks gouged deep in the earth.

 

(A boy, slumped against the steering wheel, red leaking from his lips.)

 

She sighs. It’s been almost a year since the accident, but she still feels small beneath the weight of it, still feels the force of it down to her skeleton.

 

She is so, _so_ tired.

 

Her phone vibrates, and she startles, the image of the fence dissolving as she fishes the device from her pocket and squints to read the caller ID. Dread twists in her stomach.

 

 _He'll know something is wrong if you don't answer. Just breathe. Breathe_. Her thumb hovers over the answer icon, hesitating - then she’s swiping right and bringing the screen to her ear.

 

“Hey, Dad,” she says, adopting what she hopes is a natural tone. Her heartbeat is thunderous within her chest.

 

“ _Karen_ ,” is his reply. “ _I’m sorry to bother you in the middle of the day. Are you free for a minute_?”

 

Even over the phone, his voice is clipped and cautious, almost detached. Irritation flares in her gut. After twenty-four years of being spoken to as if she’s a business associate and not her father’s only daughter, she’s surprised that it still gets under her skin this much.

 

“Sure,” she says. “What’s up?”

 

“ _Your mother wanted me to check in with you about tomorrow night._ ”

 

Resentment, thick and hot, floods her veins. "Why are you the one calling me, then?" Typical Page-family _bullshit -_ outsourcing your dirty work _,_ running away when things get difficult. _This,_ she thinks through a haze of bitterness. _This is why I'm leaving._

 

Silence stretches between them. She knows exactly what her father is doing, knows how he's dissecting his response in his head, methodically turning each word over and analyzing the effect it will have on her. Hypothesizing her reaction. Pragmatism at its finest.

 

 _"Try to understand where she's coming from,"_ he says slowly. (More Page-family bullshit - skirting around a question that requires a direct answer.) _"This is an uncomfortable situation for all of us, Karen, but you know how difficult these past few weeks have been. She just wants to make sure you're alright."_

 

Something crumbles inside of her. She's accustomed to this tightness in her chest, but it's a different kind of ache today, subtle and slow-burning, insidious, the kind of pain that makes her feel like she's being hollowed from the outside in. The kind of pain that makes her sick to be herself. _I'm not alright. I'm not alright. I'm not alright._

 

She swallows around the lump clogging her throat and says, "If Mom wants to know how I'm doing, tell her she can give me a call."

 

He sighs. “ _Karen.._.”

 

Overhead, a flock of birds cuts across the sky, and her eyes flutter shut as she imagines wings sprouting from her back, lifting her up and away into the endless blue. Up and away, gone so easily. She takes a breath, releasing it slowly as a kaleidoscope of thoughts spins through her head. _Tell me this isn't what you really want for me_ , she pleads silently. _Tell me you miss him, too. Something. Anything_.

 

“Is that all?” she says instead.

 

He pauses before replying, " _That's all, yes."_

 

"Okay." She opens her eyes. There are wildflowers growing from the spaces where the fence posts once punctured the earth, and for a sliver of a second, she can almost pretend her brother didn't take his last breath here. Her gaze narrows as she wills this place to sear itself into her memory. _I won't forget, Kev. I promise._

 

Then she's turning away, moving to pull open her car door, and as she slides behind the steering wheel, her gaze snags on the suitcase in the passenger seat. Guilt tugs at her; she shoves it firmly away. “I have to go. See you tomorrow.”

 

How effortless it’s become, lying to her father. As she tosses her phone aside and turns the key in the ignition, she tells herself that she really shouldn’t be surprised.

 

He’s the one who taught her how.

 

\-----

 

She’s thinking back to that day as she climbs the steps of the apartment building before her, squinting at the address scrawled in ink on the back of her hand. What would Paxton Page think if he could see his daughter now, trailing a lead several hours after dark in a neighborhood where every window is barred and the streets are more trash than asphalt?

 

She’s unsurprised to discover that she couldn’t give less of a fuck.

 

The intercom system looks like it hasn’t been touched in years, but the name next to apartment 3C is the one she’s looking for, so she pushes the button, stepping back and darting a quick glance over her shoulder. _Ellison is going to kill me_ , she thinks. _Save himself the hassle of having to fire me._

 

To put it simply, she'd been benched. He had dropped the bomb earlier this afternoon, informing her that the drug ring story she had been following for nearly two months was being shelved for the foreseeable future. 

 

"This is bullshit," she had said, storming into his office with a white-hot anger simmering beneath her skin. "You can't just-"

 

"I can, actually," he replied, not bothering to look up from his computer. "One of the perks of being the editor. And after your _incident_ last week-"

 

"Jesus, not this again." She'd been monitoring gang activity around the Kitchen, tracking their movements in relation to the police reports she had garnered concerning drug shipments to and from the city. As a result, her most recent articles were hitting the gangs pretty hard. A few of them had decided to hit back. One hospital visit and six stitches later, she was back on the trail, chasing the story with even more tenacity than before. Ellison had not shared her enthusiasm. "I'm fine," she told him. "You all are treating me like I'm some _fucking_ porcelain doll, and I'm not, alright? I can handle myself."

 

That got his attention. His eyes snapped up to meet hers, dark with anger beneath his glasses. "Handle yourself? _Christ_ , Karen, have you looked in a mirror recently? You're not sleeping, you're not eating...you keep pulling reckless shit like this, gambling with your own goddamn safety, and we're going to have to revisit our deal." His gaze had softened then as he sighed and ran a hand over his scalp. "This wasn't part of it, Page. And it sure as hell isn't what Ben would've wanted for you."

 

That conversation had been hours ago, and here she was, standing on the stoop of this sketchy-ass apartment building and pointedly ignoring Ellison's orders for her to back down. _Ben would've been right here with me, digging up trouble_ , she thinks as she presses the intercom button again.  _He would want me to keep going. Wouldn't he?_ She's not sure what the answer is _._ Everything is inverted now, black and white, right and wrong, and sometimes she finds herself teetering on the brink between the two, unable to see the difference. On one side, a lawyer with hair to match the gold in his heart, and his best friend, a Devil pretending to be a saint.

 

(And on the other, a man with a hole in his skull and death on his fingertips.)

 

Static crackles over the intercom, derailing this dangerous train of thought and wrenching her back to the present. She frowns, stepping forward and holding down the talk button. "Hello, Ms. Thomas?" she says. "Can you hear me?"

 

" _Yes, who is this?"_ comes the stuttered reply.

 

"Karen Page, from the Bulletin. You left me a message regarding-"

 

There's a click as the building doors unlock. Surprised, she steps through the doorway and makes her way towards the stairwell.

 

The third floor landing is hazy with shadows; sickly yellow light filters down from the end of the hallway, barely illuminating the numbers on the doors. Straining against the darkness, she scans until she finds 3C, pausing before knocking lightly.

 

There's a scratch as the deadbolt slides out of place, and then the door is swinging open.

 

There's something oddly familiar about the woman standing before her. The ovular shape of her face, hair that hangs to her shoulders in dark brown waves, gray-blue eyes peering up at her beneath thick-rimmed glasses...

 

"Ms. Page?" she asks.

 

"Yes, hi," Karen replies, flashing a quick smile.

 

The woman beckons her inside, closing the door quickly behind them. "I really appreciate you coming," she says. "I just didn't feel comfortable discussing everything over the phone."

 

"Of course, Ms. Thomas, not a problem," Karen says. Even this woman's voice is tugging at her memory, although she is certain they have never met before.

 

"You can call me Ellen," the woman says, gesturing towards the living room. "Please, make yourself at home."

 

 Karen inclines her head and crosses the small space, settling onto the sofa. "I love your artwork," she says, nodding towards the paintings that adorn the walls. "Are they yours?"

 

"My husband's," Ellen replies, sitting across from her. "He's actually at a gallery showing tonight."

 

"Do you have any other family in the city?" After six months of running around the Kitchen playing journalist, she's finally found her rhythm. The first time she had interviewed a lead, she'd emptied the contents of her stomach in the bathroom. Twice. "The trick, Page," Ellison had told her later, "is to talk to people like they're, you know, real people, and not just pawns in your story." She'd wanted to punch him at the time, but his advice had stuck.

 

Ellen's eyes go glassy. "My brother," she says. "He...he was killed last year."

 

"I'm so sorry," Karen says. Fragmented memories burst behind her eyes. Sandy hair, eyes blue as sky-

 

(Chain link fences.)

 

Ellen smiles sadly. "We weren't close. We had a huge falling out, years ago. Still-" she cuts off, bows her head. "He was shot. They never did find the person who killed him. I guess that's Hell's Kitchen for you, huh?" She stands slowly, retrieving a small picture frame from a bookshelf across the room. "This is the last picture we took together, right after he finished grad school. I don't know why I kept it, but I'm glad I did."

 

Karen takes the frame in her hands and stares down at the photo -

 

_No. Oh, god, no no no no no no...  
_

 

He's younger, thinner, but it's him, without a doubt. She would know his face anywhere, that calm, calculated smile that never seemed to reach his eyes. Nausea bubbles in her stomach, slithers up her throat.

 

James Wesley is smiling up at her.

**Author's Note:**

> I have been toying with the idea of writing a multi-chapter Kastle fic for a while now, so here we are! I’m really really nervous about this (*peeks head out from cushy, comfortable 800-word drabble territory*), but we’ll see how it turns out! This is going to be an angst-filled shitstorm of a ride through Punisher territory, ya’ll - if you’re looking for something light and happy, this is not it. You’ve been warned. :) 
> 
> For this first chapter, I definitely took some liberties with Karen’s backstory and her brother’s accident, but I tried to build things off of what we canonically know. I'm going to fill in the gaps in later chapters, so if it's confusing right now, hopefully it will all come together and make sense by the end! I also gave Wesley a sister, so there's that. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> Don't worry - Frank is going to make an appearance soon (AKA the next chapter, hahaha). Can't leave my murder son out of the action for long!
> 
> Special thanks to [lightofpage](http://lightofpage.tumblr.com/%22) for listening to my woes and for encouraging me throughout this process, and to [myguiltyghost](http://myguiltyghost.tumblr.com/) for inspiring me to write a multi-chapter fic. :) And thank YOU for stopping by! Until next time, friends. :)
> 
> [Musical inspiration for this chapter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsOxndz56Fs&list=PL50Tx2Ap7Bf0Jwty5D_3xFbnjf3KkFSH8&index=7%22) (idk guys, this song just SCREAMS Karen Page to me.)
> 
>  [Everything we know about Paxton Page](http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Paxton_Page)
> 
>  [*shit escalates](https://www.goodreads.com/series/117100-red-rising) (a quote from my favorite character in Pierce Brown's Red Rising trilogy. It seemed appropriate for Kastle.)


End file.
